


Five Times Michael Entered Hell, and One Time She Didn't

by coldho



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/F, implied expicit content and also not the safest bondage, its bad writing yall, practice safe kink at home kids yall are mortal, super non-linear timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 15:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19275697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldho/pseuds/coldho
Summary: Michael takes pride in her back channels; she knows how to play the enemy like the Protector she was created to be.There are some visits she’s made to Hell, though, that she remembers more than the others.





	Five Times Michael Entered Hell, and One Time She Didn't

**Author's Note:**

> me, tapping the mic and leaning in so my mouth is all over that bitch: the rising popularity of gabriel/beez is cowardice michael is Right There

**1.**

In Michael’s opinion, Beelzebub’s human form has always been laughable. She’s tiny, short stature and thin frame masking the gluttony that underlies her. When they’d first met, centuries ago, Beelzebub had stared into her face with something more than greed. She wasn’t intimidated by Beelzebub’s appearance, no matter how grotesque it was; she’d had to duck her head to meet Beelzebub’s eyes, after all. But from that look, she’d known to maintain a curt distance.

And even though Beelzebub had the respect to keep her flies off of her, the glint remained.

She will never trust Beelzebub, she thinks, but she respects that the other has continued to maintain all that is hers at a distance. They’re professional; they can walk through the never-ending mat of the Prince’s grounds together and know that the secrets they trade will only be swallowed by one another.

They’ve always been professional; they’ve always been private.

“It haaaazzzz nothing to do with truzzt,” Beelzebub had said the first time they’d met, the hidden gate to Hell curdling behind her. Michael hadn’t wanted to be there, but the peon Beelzebub had sent her to hunt had been enticing. Still, she refused to subordinate herself. Instead, she lofted her chin, just enough that Beelzebub had to crane her neck.

“I would hope not,” she replied, Beelzebub’s buzzing a shriek in the silence. Even if the buzz had been just a hum, she wouldn’t have trusted that they wouldn’t be caught. Beelzebub had trouble maintaining her form, then. Although they were on Earth, insects had twisted from the open pores of her skin and the creases beneath her nails leaked pus that made the dirt beneath their feet crack.

But it’s been decades since then, and they’ve taken to meeting on Beelzebub’s turf, where there’s no risk of angelic intervention. Now, Michael’s robes trail behind her, white silk stark against black soil teeming with weeds and crawling creatures.

“This Noah thing,” Beelzebub continues, voice stiff and cold. “Really your side?”

“Vengeance can be holy,” Michael says. Beelzebub, she’s noticed, has pulled the edges of her robes up so they don’t grab at anything. She’s also noticed that the soil under her own feet is flat and still; there are no earthen particles sticking to the bottoms of her feet.

Back then, she remembers, the dirt had cracked under her, too.

“The flood will take everything, though,” Beelzebub replies. The only thing Michael can feel against her is Beelzebub’s gaze, eyes mirrored and expanding tenfold like a fly. “I think that’zz more our thing than yours.”

Michael doesn’t quite smile, but she does adjust the hem of her robe, lets it drift into Beelzebub’s path. Teasing, she’s heard others say, has become popular among the humans when faced with their enemies. She quite likes it.

“Only what needs to be taken,” she says, “Nothing more.”

When Beelzebub treads across the hem, leaves mud and the carcass of a maggot, she thinks again that she has never been trustworthy. She doesn’t have to insist to herself that she has never been trustworthy.

-

**2.**

After Eve, Gabriel blossomed into the over-confident know-it-all God had heralded him to be. Michael has never liked him, but her dislike grew after Eve. _She_ was the Protector, the Healer, the General. _She_ was supposed to hold the discordance of the Great War in the palm of her hand.

Gabriel, meanwhile, assumed in that booming voice God had long ago blessed him with that everything would work out in the end. He filed it away, something for the future. There would always be a War, of course, but it would be straightforward. Planning outside of the heralds God granted them – well. That surely wasn’t necessary.

Beelzebub, she will never admit, had foretold what she’d come to think.

“You areeee their General,” she had buzzed, body thrumming with the building force of her words. “God wouldn’t appoooointtt a Generallll if there wazzzzn’t meant to be mezzzz, planning, difficultttty.”

“Her Plan is too Great for us to know,” Michael sniffed, bringing her hands together with a cruel reverence that made Beelzebub hiss.

“Yezzzzzz,” Beelzebub said, “But assumption izzzzn’t doubttt. And she did give uzz – _yooour_ lot mindzzz.”

 _Minds so many angels have never used_ , she couldn’t help but think, dangerous thought though it was in the wake of the Great Fall.

It wasn’t to say that she doubted God, of course. She never did, she never has, and she never will. As She has said: Climb every mountain. Strength through struggle. But being annoyed isn’t a sin, and damn her if Gabriel hasn’t gotten more annoying with every century.

Especially with the birth of Christ.

“He’s an incredible child,” Michael explains from her seat in Beelzebub’s parlor, “More humble than any being I’ve ever met.”

Beelzebub grits at her, all yellow, broken teeth. “You would know who’s humble.”

Michael rolls her eyes up, praying for calm in this godforsaken place. “This isn’t about him.”

“Isn’t everything related to that child about him?” she asks, sweet like honey stuck thick with flies. “Didn’t he bring him into the world?”

“You would think that from what he says,” Michael replies before she can think better of it. Beelzebub’s eyes snap to her and for a second, she forgets the nature of her existence.

“He’s my Adversary, you know,” Beelzebub breathes, leaning in. They haven’t touched in centuries, and they still aren’t, but she can feel the beat of tiny wings in the existence surrounding her. Not Beelzebub’s wings, though she wonders, vaguely, if she still has them. She thinks they would form an unbalanced expanse on her back, wide and translucent and threaded with paper thin veins. She imagines they’d shimmer.

“Could I not tempt you,” Beelzebub asks, “To let me mess with him? He’s a pain in my ass, too.”

Michael watches a stream ooze down from parted lips, reaches out carefully to scrape her thumb across her chin. When Beelzebub shudders backwards, she smiles, all white, gleaming teeth.

“Demon, would it be temptation or righteous humility?”

-

**3.**

“We gave him a commendation for that, too,” Beezlebub says, bored. Michael raises a slow brow.

“Did you, now? Surely not, the Inquisition was a holy cleansing.”

“Methods, though, and you know half of them weren’t worth anything,” Beelzebub drawls. She shifts on the dining room chair lazily, leg swinging over the arm. Her skirt pulls up as it does, revealing inflamed skin pocked and pilfered by diseases yet to be named.

“While this particular matter is in my department, their alliance – or lack thereof – has nothing to do with me,” Michael sighs, leaning back. She pauses midway, arching her back slightly as she winces. Her waistcoat suddenly feels impossibly tight against her torso.

Beelzebub shrugs. “Dagon would probably want it for their files,” she says.

But Michael is focused on her form. She wonders if the tightness bleeding into her is an extension of this space. Beelzebub’s dining room, much like the rest of Hell, is crowded. They are its only two inhabitants, but the table sags under the weight of an aged banquet, humidity wafting from rotten fruit, vapors swarming heavy with flies.

There’s more than just the food, though. Rusted chandeliers creak from the ceiling, mildewed velvet and silk dragging from ceiling to floor, dull candelabras gold under thick coatings of wax, ottomans and plush chairs and chiffoniers cloistering. All this spread across heavy fur carpets that make Michael feel as though she is sinking into this space.

But Beelzebub’s dress, she thinks, is strikingly light. It’s black, yes, and high-necked and long-sleeved, but the skirt falls low on her thigh given the angle of her leg. It’s less of a pull downwards and more of a hook, one that the hedonist matches with the same gluttonous stare Michael has come to associate with her – or rather, has come to associate with herself, another chandelier, curtain, candelabra, ottoman. With whatever their backchannel is.

“It wazzzzzzzzzzzz the Greaaat Fall,” she had said then, just as bored as she is now. “The numberzz are balanced.”

Michael hadn’t looked convinced, and she’d known Beelzebub could tell. She had sighed in response, the breath coming out in a whistle that made the air around them itch.

“I don’t think you could Fallll, now,” she continued, “Ifff youuu didn’t have doubt then, you wouldn’ttttt havvvvve doubt now.”

Nothing has changed since then, Michael thinks (never insists). But they have come to understand each other’s sides and Hell, Michael knows, is cramped and personal and filled with as many things as you can squish into such a crushing place. Demons are like that, hoarding as much as they can and hoarding over their hoards with no share of trust to give up. 

Heaven is, of course, the opposite. Open and filled with blank space and mirrors that reveal your innermost parts. There's more than enough trust to give but there's nothing to hold dear. No self to covet.

She knew this before, of course. There are no depths to gain about Heaven in Hell, but the application of Heaven to Hell can be gained. So when she stands, Beelzebub stares, and when she breaches the space between them, Beelzebub blinks.

“The Inquisition would’vvvvve hadddd you for thizzzzz,” Beelzebub says, dropping deeper into her chair, leg slipping down to curl in the opening between the arm and the seat. It makes space for her to settle over the demon, settle on the arm, one hand at Beelzebub’s waist, the other on the puckered skin of her thigh.

“Perhaps,” she agrees, “But I am an angel, and I must grant Her creations with the honor and appreciation She deserves.”

“I am a deeeeemonnnn,” Beelzebub corrects.

Michael sniffs. She doesn’t bother with niceties, miracling Beelzebub’s wrists to clamp tight around the chair’s opposite arm.

“She did create you,” Michael says, bending down so her lips meet Beelzebub’s jawline. When she sucks at it, she tastes overripe fruit, peel coated in a slimy mold that rubs disconcertingly against her throat. Her fingers trail across Beelzebub’s cheek, running slowly down to force her chin up, to let her struggle to meet her eyes. “And she created us to be stripped free of this excess.”

She’s thought if this is the kind of Arrangement Aziraphale and Crawly (Crowley) have developed. But then again, _everyone_ knows that the angel lost his flaming sword and _everyone_ knows that the demon fears the serpentine self he’d condemned himself to when he Fell. She doubts they could conceive her logic.

“Izz that what they call it thezzzzze dayyyzzzz?” Beelzebub says.

“Partly,” she replies, breathing into the crook of Beelzebub’s neck. She kisses slowly down her neck, then hikes her skirt up to mouth at her jaundiced stomach. “They’d also call it ‘keeping your friends close,’”

“And your enemiezzzz closer?” Beezlebub asks around a hiccupping gasp. Michael lifts her head to smile at the sound, divine rather than wicked, hand pinching sharply at the crease between Beelzebub’s pelvis and thigh.

“You haaaveee friendzzzz in heavvvveeeeen?” Beelzebub teases in turn. When Michael snorts, decidedly unangelic, Beelzebub clenches her teeth, digs her fingers into the chair, rolls her hips up to meet Michael’s skin.

“Didn’t think zzzzo,” she says, Michael pressing her hips back down. She keeps a tight hold on Beelzebub as she traces a slow swath down her stomach with her tongue. Beelzebub is cloying, gagging, delicious, and she strips it away with every swipe.

In Michael’s opinion, it'd be a funny world if angels went around befriending each other. 

-

**4.**

In the after of their crescendo, they like to argue. Beezlebub takes her time to come out of her stupor, staring up at the ceiling and breathing even though she doesn’t have to, slowly working her limbs out of their binds while Michael waits.

They both like having her tied down during. Michael likes the way leather cuts into rotting arms, leaving smears of white pus across skin. She floats and Beelzebub sinks, the dichotomy fitting. Comforting, even.

She doesn’t like how Beelzebub’s constraints bring out her eyes, though. They’re the only thing Beelzebub is able to touch her with, during. She often finds them fixated on the gold lining her cheeks, something like delight in the demon’s eyes.

Michael knows her human form is not necessarily beautiful, and is comforted by God’s choice. She’s tow-headed, thin lips permanently pinched in tight. The gold pieces flaking from her face don’t sparkle or glimmer; they aren’t delicate. Rather, she imagines they would burn if bloody fingers were to trace down them.

Flames spell danger for angels, but she doesn’t like to consider the saying ‘moth drawn to flame.’ She usually keeps Beelzebub’s eyes facing away from her when they fuck.

She can’t do that after, though, and now Beelzebub is watching her with a lazy frown.

“It’s strange,” she rasps, ankles rolling slowly. They’d laid her out on Beelzebub’s overstuffed mattress, cuffed her wrists and ankles to each post of the canopy bed. Her arms are free, but she hasn’t worked her ankles out, yet. “That angels don’t dance.”

Michael hums from the armchair across the room. She’s been studying the bookshelves lining the bedroom walls. They bow under the weight of old books, pages yellow and molding. She’s been tracking roaches as they crawl between spines, melting in and out of ink splotches. The risk that could rise from taking a sword to the shelves makes her skin crawl (although she is unsure of what the sensation bears).

She’s never been one for reading.

“Neither do you,” she replies.

If anything, that makes Beelzebub’s frown widen. Michael doesn’t trust it, and Beelzebub knows.

“Taken lessons recently?” Michael asks, already over it. Beelzebub stretches luxuriously, takes her time to crack her elbows and loll her head to the side so their eyes meet.

“Crowley introduced us to disco,” Beelzebub clarifies.

Michael doesn’t say anything.

“But that’s not the point,” she continues, “I think it’s…interesting that angels don’t dance, despite your lot having all the best choreographers.”

Michael pauses. She pauses, then tilts her head down and inhales slow.

Beelzebub has always wanted. It’s in her nature, and Michael can’t fault her for that. She’d known since the beginning.

“You’re desperate,” she’d said, leaning in close. It forced Beelzebub back, though the broken ground beneath her feet had spread, had begun to blister Michael’s. “You want another fallen angel on your side.”

Beelzebub had bent up towards her, breath hot and stinking and uncontrolled. “You’reeee a little ztrooong for our hierarchiezzzz,” she’d replied. “The logic of demon zzzelfishnezzzzzzz hazzzz nothing to do with trustttttt.

They’ve grown since then, but Michael has always been professional. Beelzebub has always been professional. This argument – this want – is too much for either of them.

She stands, faces the shelves. A roach skitters out between the cracks in one book. She imagines it under her thumb.

“Away with your doubt, demon,” she says instead. Beelzebub’s gaze is cold against her back, the humid nausea of Beelzebub’s manor quickly dispersing.

Contrary to earthly belief, Hell is usually home to a clammy chill. Beelzebub’s insects and disease have never been comfortable in those conditions.

“Not quite,” Beelzebub says before she can leave.

-

**5.**

“Althouggghhhh,” she said, “We are abovvvveeee mozzzt orderrr.”

Michael lifted her brow and tilted her head to the sky. “Not above all.”

“Of couuuurrrrzzzzzzzze not,” Beelzebub agreed, “And Zzzzzhe created you to zzztrategizzzzzzzeeee.”

They hadn’t shaken on it, but the sentiment was the same. And it was haunting. Then, it hadn’t been; it had been logical security.

But she’d since seen Crowley in a bath of holy water and heard of Aziraphale breathing flames of hellfire. When she’d notified Beelzebub of the latter, Beelzebub grew so quiet she could hear her breath through the phone’s receiver.

They’d dropped off in-person meetings since the telephone was invented, but these are extraordinary circumstances.

So they meet.

“Gabriel doubted,” Beelzebub says, staring at a point past Michael, “I could feel it.”

She doesn’t know what to say. The garden is darker than usual, more desolate than she can remember. There are no bugs, no bacteria, just the distant rustle of dead grass as they sit on the porch.

“I doubted, too,” Beelzebub says.

Michael turns to meet her eyes, but they’re distant. “I would expect as much from you,” she says, stiff.

The words are flat even to her.

“Yes,” Beelzebub says without continuing. The grounds are filled with cement monstrosities and broken onyx stones. Needless eyesores, the opposite of Heaven, but they fill her with an ache when she focuses on them. Beelzebub has never let her feel it before.

She doesn’t often act in her role as a Healer, and she doubts this is what God intended by it.

“It’s different,” Michael agrees, finally. Beelzebub manages to focus on her collarbone.

“If it’s ineffable, are there really rules?” she responds.

Michael doesn’t know. Michael doesn’t know, and she knows that’s important.

“To be honest,” she admits, leaning over to rest a hand on Beelzebub’s knee, “I _am_ glad there’s more than the Great Plan. It always felt so…straightforward, the way Gabriel put it.”

When Beelzebub tips her head up, Michael catches her lips with her own. They’ve never done this before, and it shows; Beelzebub is slow and clumsy, Michael rough enough to burst a pustule in the corner of her accomplice’s mouth. But when they sit back, the taste of must and decay heavy on Michael’s tongue, they don’t let go of each other.

“I did like order,” Beelzebub says with a brush of a smile. “Temptation is comfortable.”

“I never cared much for it,” Michael admits, “I was actually grateful when you reached out to me.”

“I guessed as much,” she says, moving to press back in.

But Michael stops her, chest to chest. “There’s a limit to me, you know,” she says. And she smiles, full  and unabashed (if teasing).

“I know,” Beelzebub says, “It’s more than I could ever want.”

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE tell me it was clear the "one time she didn't" was them negotiating their arrangement post-Fall on Earth and that it was referenced in each part because Writing Multiple Tenses Is Messy.


End file.
